tion she had wanted. She had never
reproached him for that wrong as many women would have; on the contrary,
he remembered how, on the night when it was done, she had turned to
comfort him with her "It had got to be." She had been generous. She had
never hinted at reparation. No; she certainly had not asked him to marry
her.

But that also had had to be. They couldn't help themselves. They had
been caught up and flung together and carried away in a maze; like the
Combined Maze at the Poly., it was, when they had to run--to run, locked
together.

What weighed on him most for the moment was the financial problem. He
lived in daily fear of not being able to pay his way without breaking
into the rest of his small savings. His schemes, that had looked so fine
on paper, had left, even on paper, no margin for anything much beyond
rent and clothing and their weekly bills. There had been no margin at
all for Baby; Baby who, above all, ought to have been foreseen and
provided for. Baby had been paid for out of capital. So that from the
sordid financial point of view Violet's discovery was a calamity.

It was a mercy he had got his rise at Michaelmas. But even so they were
behindhand with their bills. That, of course, would not have happened if
he hadn't had to buy a new suit that winter. Ranny had found out that
his bicycle, though it diminished his traveling expenses and kept him
fit, was simply "ruination" to his clothes.

It was awful to be behindhand with the bills. But if they got behind
with the rent they would be done for. He would lose Granville. His rent
was not as any ordinary rent that might be allowed to run on for a week
or two in times of stress. Granville was relentless in exaction of the
weekly tribute. If payments lapsed, he lost Granville and he lost the
twenty-five pounds down he paid for it.

And Granville, that scourged him, was itself scourged of Heaven. That
winter the frosts bound the walls too tight and the thaws loosened
them. The rain, beating through from the southwest, mildewed the back
sitting-room and the room above it. The wind made of Granville a pipe, a
whistle, a Jew's harp to play its tunes on; such tunes as set your teeth
on edge.

Ransome said to himself bitterly that his marriage had not been his only
folly. He should have had the sense to do as Booty had done. Fred had
married soon after Michaelmas, when he too had got his rise. He and
Maudie had not looked upon houses to their destru